
Sharon Lavigne, pictured at left holding the bouquet of roses, founded the environmental justice group RISE St. James in 2018 in response to Formosa Plastics plan to build a $9.4B manufacturing plant in St. James Parish. In this photo from June 19, 2020, members of RISE St. James pray over the graves of formerly enslaved Black people. Formosa is planning to build its manufacturing complex there. (Photo courtesy Louisiana Bucket Brigade)
After a St. James Parish judge ruled last week that an environmental justice group could hold an hour-long Juneteenth prayer service on land where they say enslaved Black people are buried, Formosa Plastics asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal in Gretna to keep the group off the land. The Taiwan-based company has acquired state permits to build a $9.4B chemical manufacturing complex on 2,400 acres in St. James. Thursday, a three-judge panel rejected Formosa’s appeal and sent the matter back to Judge Emile R. St. Pierre in the 23rd Judicial District. Later that day, St. Pierre allowed Rise St. James to proceed with its scheduled Friday, June 19th prayer service.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day that Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced to Black people who’d been kept in the dark that the Civil War was over and that they were no longer enslaved.
Rise St. James, the environmental group that gathered to pray on the site, has a larger goal of stopping Formosa from constructing its plant. In 2018, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Formosa’s decision to choose the St. James site signaled a “brighter economic future for Louisiana,” predicting the development would result in 1,200 new direct jobs and 8,000 new indirect jobs.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.